Last week, my least-favorite co-worker departed for another job. There was much rejoicing. Stephanie had irritated everyone by criticizing them while insisting that she was perfect, telling everyone that she was smart because her mother was a teacher yet displaying great ignorance, making a lot of noise, and being only marginally competent at her job. After she left, we found the client files that had gone missing (she was one of the most frequent speculators about this mystery) crammed into all the cabinets of her cubicle, and we realized that one reason she hadn’t been doing her data entry was that her computer’s keyboard was ruined by all the food crumbs she had dropped into it!

Some time ago, I had decided to control my annoyance with Stephanie by regarding her most ignorant and strange comments as merely amusing. Here are some that I wrote down:

“Make sure they’re in numberal order–you know, by A, B, C….”

“Don’t you be criticizing my diet. These pork rinds are only thirteen percent cholesterol.”

“He don’t talk too good.”

“I’m allergic to everything on this earth . . . I mean this human earth.”

“If they can clone a daggone sheep, why can’t they bring back vinyl albums?”

“I can’t help it; I just like to talk. I shoulda hosted a talk show–the 24-hour kind.”

“It’s enough to drive an insane person crazy.”

“I hate the color brown with a passion. I wish my hair was brown.”

“She got a round-ass head.”

“I’m gonna get rained on ’cause my car is real far from where I parked.”

“In New Jersey they got all kinds of people. You could be just as green as the day is long, and they look right through you.”

“If I think about Bambi, I can’t eat those gyro sandwiches.”

(singing) “Que sera sera, wherever you are, you be…”

“I’m not one to judge people, but homosexuality is an abomination.”

(on her next-to-last day) “I’ll be back tomorrow to give you another day to grace my presence.”

and in dialogue:
STEPHANIE: I was listening to your radio, and he says, “One and one is…” and I said, “Two.” and he goes, “Three!”
JANE: It’s “One and one and one is three,” if you would just listen. It’s the Beatles.
STEPHANIE: Oh, I thought the Beatles split up a long time ago.

While I’m at it, here are some other bits of conversation overheard at work:

Andy once meant to say, “Can I top off your coffee?” but said, “Can I cough up your toffee?”

“His doctor said, ‘If you were going to damage your brain, you damaged the right part.’ He was Jewish for a week, but he’s fine now.”

“My band’s playing at the Rib Fest–I completely forgot until I read about it in the paper.”

the day before President Clinton came to Pittsburgh for the NAACP convention:
AUDREY: The President’s coming tomorrow!
TROY: President of what?
AUDREY: The President of the United States of America!
TROY: Oh, is that the guy who sings that song about eating peaches?

one technical illustrator, looking at a drawing done by another illustrator:
TOM: That’s a nice-looking dish of orange sherbet.
JOE: That’s a condom.

“This is a test of your newfound patience and niceness, bitch.”

BARB: Did you miss my singing over the weekend?
BILL: No, I just stepped on my cat a few times.

“I never could get into those twice-baked potatoes. It just sounds too much like when birds feed their young what they already ate.”

JON: Did you dress up for Halloween?
JILL: I was Athena, the goddess of wisdom.
MELANY: How’d you pull that off?
JILL: It said it was Athena on the package.